Part 18 (Ep 84-85) with Don from Fourth Reich Archaeology

Speaker 3In the last episode, we spoke with Lou Ferante about the history of the Mafia, including the key players. You may have noticed that the topic of Jack Ruby was conspicuously absent from most of that discussion. In this episode, we're putting our focus squarely on Jack Ruby and trying to answer two key questions. How close was Ruby to the Mafia really and why did Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald? In this 18th edition of Recaps and Rebuttals, were joined by second-time guests on Solving JFK, Dawn from the Fourth Reich Archaeology Podcast. Dawn and his partner, Dick, had a great series on Jack Ruby to add to their best in-class series on the Warren Commission. We'll take all of the things we learned about Ruby on solving JFK, supplement that with anything Don has to add that we're missing and see if we can get some final determinations on Jack Ruby coming up next on solving JFK.

Speaker 1In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting. The final, apparently official, doesn't kind of be died and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and comes to you out and

Speaker 1It's also a fact in a phone, a pussy and a fervent spurs, mission answers, acted in a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long, a long.

Speaker 0Don, great to have you back on the show. It is great to be back, Matt. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 3Absolutely. As you know, I was in the top 17% of your listeners on Fourth Reich archaeology. And for me, you're series on the Warren Commission in the topic of today's episode, Jack Ruby, some of the best podcasts work around for sure. Elapov, you and Doug, Don bring some informality and just a different perspective than everybody else. It's sort of a younger perspective and more kind of like less trusting of authority and not that people in the JFK. a critical community and it's depressing, but you guys kind of bring a different, a different level of different perspectives. So, love your show, love what you're doing, congratulations on your success.

Speaker 0Well, thank you. It really means a lot. I find it very validating and it's an honor to hear that from you and honor that you trust my work enough to bring me on here, because as you know, I'm a big fan of solving JFK. So, the feeling is definitely mutual, and you built up a good body of work and we're plowing on into even more of these noided and paranoid parapolitical topics. So yeah, on where we go.

Speaker 3And so you guys have obviously you touch on current events as well, but some of the historic things that you guys have gone really, really deep on, Warren Commission, Jack Ruby, I've only scratched the very surface of are there any other topics that you guys are looking at diving into or that you still have to complete or you're done with those?

Speaker 0Oh, there are so many more. I mean, so in coming up on the what we're calling she Harvey Oswald, our series on the two would be female assassins who both attempted allegedly to kill Gerald Ford. They touch on so many different topics each one of them. in our current part of that series. We're looking at squeaky phromy and the Manson family and all of the deep political significance around that issue. And with the next one, Sarah Jane Moore, she was of course tied up in the Symbianese liberation army, so we're going to be digging into that. and the deep state ties in that respect as well. And when we get back into Jerry World, you know, we're going to be turning back the clock, looking at watergate in 2026. We're going to be looking at all kinds of stuff. The coup in Chile, the warning, Gola, just a... we found that using Gerald Ford as kind of our protagonist to take the heroes journey through the fourth Reich history of the post war US political order is a rich rich vehicle to explore just any number of topics, you know, not just in the 60s and 70s but beyond.

Speaker 3Let's get this in Jack Ruby or a heology. What do you say?

Speaker 0Let's do it.

Speaker 3All right. OK, so recap and rebuttals, you kind of know the deal. I'm going to recap the big picture things we talked about on Ruby. So the idea is, you know, someone could listen to this and kind of get like a cliff notes, but really a lot is being left out. And if you want the citation, you got to go to the individual episodes. But every one of these things, I've got, I've got a document or worst case scenario. And the book's not as good as a document, but anyway, and we have some special rebuttals from Fred Leth-One today, we're going to be covering, so looking forward to those later on. Alright, let's get into it. So why does any of this matter, why does Jack Ruby matter? Well, everyone knows Ruby's killing of Oswald, permanently prevented any trial testimony about Oswald's motive, or any possible other people that Oswald could have been involved with. and his actions don't match spontaneous grief, they align with access, timing, and institutional tolerance in the form of the police allowing him to get in.

Speaker 3Now that's a disputed topic, so some extent, but Ruby repeatedly implied that he was acting under pressure from powerful people. And, you know, he confessed that the official story wasn't true. Now, there's a bit of, like I said, there's a bit of a rebel on that particular thing we'll talk about later, but I'm not really solid on the rebel, but the point is, Ruby himself, we've got on tape a couple of different times saying some things that you wouldn't expect a guy to say if he was a loan nut, which we got two loan nuts here, we can't forget. Lee Harvey Oswald, the loan nut, and then the loan nut that kills the loan nut is Jack Ruby. Okay, and we're supposed to just not pay attention to any of his ties because loan nuts kill loan nuts all the time. In this episode, we're not going over the actual shooting of Oswald or how Ruby got into the building. We covered that in episode 26. If you want to go back and listen to a detailed analysis of that, and also I want to point out that Paul Abbott is an Australian author who's really dedicated a lot of work.

Speaker 3He's got a great book called That The Justice About. Ruby killing Oswald. So with that, we'll jump into Ruby's life. Any other preliminary thoughts you have on Ruby?

Speaker 0No, I think you covered it. I mean, it's a fascinating, fascinating story that not only tells us a lot about the JFK assassination and the forces that may have been behind it, but also, you know, just his story, we talked about it on our series as kind of an immigrant and the model story of the poor immigrant coming up through a very gritty urban, up bringing in prohibition era, Chicago of Al Capone, it's so rich, you know, it's so textured and not, it goes beyond just JFK and I think offers a lot of insights on the country that we all live in and are trying to make a better place.

Speaker 3Absolutely. So, his early life, Ruby is born as Jacob Leon Rubinstein in Chicago in 1911. He's raised in unstable conditions. I mean, that's that's really an understatement. And he was in juvenile detention and foster homes. You guys talked about about I think went into a little more detail on that. I mean, he really, he really did have kind of a shaky upbringing, right? When he was just a kid.

Speaker 0Oh yeah, yeah, I think his dad was an abusive drunk, his mom had some problems with psychosis and was, he had, I think, 10 siblings and they got split up and brought back together so a very unstable family environment to the point where his real education was in the streets. I think in a lot of ways.

Speaker 3That's right. Speaking of say, he drops out of school at 16 and he delivers sealed envelopes for Al Capone. That was one way he made money. A dollar envelope for Al Capone. So one of the big, you know, one of the two questions, the big questions we're trying to answer about Ruby is, is this guy Mafia affiliated? Does he have close relationships with the Mafia, any sort of relationship? And then, you know, And right out of the gate, he's delivering full of sealed envelopes for like the number one most famous gangster of the Prohibition era. maybe all time yeah yeah so okay if that's the only fact then I would grant everyone huh coincidence has happened but standby friends there are many many more so oh yeah here's one of the things that was really really sort of telling to me he moved to Los Angeles in 1933 and he moved out there specifically to sell tip sheets for races at the Santa Anita race track

Speaker 3And at the same time, the same year, 1933, Johnny Roselli moved to LA to oversee gambling at the Santa Anita race track for the Chicago outfit. So they're both connected to these race track gambling operations. You know, to me, it's suggest that Ruby went out there at the same time as Roselli. Otherwise, I mean, that's quite a coincidence. What do you say?

Speaker 0Oh yeah, yeah, and it's part of a bigger westward migration. I know we'll get into this a little bit more, but you got to remember, at this time, LA was on the up and up, you know, the whole American west was really ripe for the pickings for the Mafia, and so when Rocelli goes out there, he is an envoy of sorts. I also want to say, you know who else worked at the Santa and he didn't met? Is that Sirhan Sirhan?

Speaker 3It's not at the same time.

Speaker 0Not at the same time. We've been a little bit later. Yeah, it's very interesting. In the stables.

Speaker 3That's a very interesting footnote there. Well, you know what, I talked to Lou Ferante recently, and this guy who was in the Gambino crime family that's some time in prison, and he told me that everything west of Chicago at the time was ruled by Chicago, because that was where the mafia ended. So Chicago just kind of controller everything west of Chicago. That's pretty good news. So the next thing is okay, so we have delivering envelopes for Al Capone and moving to Los Angeles to go work at the same racetrack that Johnny Roselli moved to at the same time. Okay, maybe those are coincidences. Once you do any comes about back to Chicago. Ruby goes to work for the union when he comes back to Chicago from LA, and it's the scrap iron and junk handlers union. And what's interesting isn't the mere fact of him working for a union. It's that he stayed at the union after the Mafia took it over, and after the non-union founder Leon Cook was murdered during Ruby's tenure.

Speaker 3So Ruby stays on for a while with the Mafia folks running everything. That's a little bit more colorful. I don't do any more context on the union side of things.

Speaker 0Yeah, as I understand it, some of those reports from that murder even placed Ruby at the scene of the crime. I don't know if it's confirmed, I don't think it's something to necessarily hang your head on, but it is reported that he might have been there. And the other, this is just another one of these amazing probably coincidences, but just to show how small of a world we're dealing with in JFK land and the Warren Commission. that the guy who came into power in that union in the mafia era, who ended up being a real close associate of Jimmy Hoffa, was a guy called Paul Red Dorfman, and his stepson, Alan Dorfman, became a major client in a huge scandal represented by none other than Super Lawyer from Chicago Bert Jenner, who was one of the senior counsel to the Warren Commission and just another very, very interesting character. And the Dorfman family had a large amount of shared interests with Leicester Crown, the Chicago's Crown family, who was the controlling shareholder of, General Dynamics, the Aerospace Manufacturer with a massive presence in Fort Worth, where JFK was making massive amounts of reference to the Fort Worth-based Converte

Speaker 0on the visit on the very morning of November 22nd. So, it's like a real small world there.

Speaker 3When I finally make my Charlie Day, always sunny, conspiracy web, I'm gonna send it to you and then you can add some stuff. And then we can just literally, people just think we're fully insane, which get committed, it'll be fun.

Speaker 0Okay, we're gonna need like 30 feet by 30 feet for that one.

Speaker 3Here's the thing. We're going to have citations on our little strings of yarn, so I broke an eat it. Sorry. That's right. Okay. So far. Al Capone going out to Santa Anita comes back and works free union. All right, I mean, I'm open to the mafia, but it could be coincidental. Let's see where it goes. Okay, World War 2. He's drafted in 1943. He serves honorably as an aircraft mechanic. And then in post war, because back from World War 2, and he starts a manufacturing business with his brothers, I called it like trinkets like they're they're they're just building like junk. I don't like in selling it I wasn't clear on like what the business strategy was, but I was like man these guys are just making junk in selling it You know much about that business

Speaker 0they probably would have called it Chachkis. Yeah, no, that's, I think that's right, and maybe there's some connection with the union because of the use of scrap metal and this type of stuff, but he was always, and these guys were hustlers, you know, this is, many people have like a very dichotomous view of what it means to be mafia related, that you're either, you know, Michael Corleone, or you're not mob affiliated. But for every Michael Koolion, there's like 50 runners and hustlers and just street thugs that are not wealthy guys, but they're just trying to make a living and in the Ruby siblings, all of them are always like, they had this business, they were later doing, I think one of them had a cleaners, just in these little businesses that may or may not have a little seed money and be doing some laundering to keep the lights on from time to time. I certainly have seen it in real life too, it's not far-fetched.

Speaker 3I mean, most shopping centers, I go to in America. I mean, you're never seen anybody there. I assume everything's a money laundering for I don't understand the business model. But I'm personally, yeah. But anyway, so Ruby leaves the family business. And by the way, it's around this time that he changes his name for legally, from Rubenstein to Ruby. And I think the rationale for that was that he thought he would have better opportunities, just based on, you know, people being anti-Semitic,

Speaker 0Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's yeah.

Speaker 3So Ruby then he leaves the family business after a buyout a moose to Dallas in 1947 We're gonna come back to that in just a second, but I want to think a quick little detour and talk about this Richard Nixon, you know, this whole sidebar on did Ruby know Richard Nixon From from the House on American activities committee. We familiar with this Controversy

Speaker 0Yeah, I'd become familiar with it.

Speaker 3So I don't know if you guys looked at this issue or not, but I do event to it and the whole time, I was like, I always thought this was a legit thing that, you know, because it is a kind of a real document, it turns out that it's just much more likely that they're talking about another Jack Rubenstein who literally was a former communist and it's during the Who Act. right like what would rub and what would jack ruby have on on america he's never been involved in anything that you know just because he's involved in the union says i mean he's he's he's he's a communist so anyway that that was where i land it was that uh it's probably not the jack rubinstein that we know in that document

Speaker 0Yeah, I found your analysis of the issue to be persuasive and, you know, the junk candler's union that Ruby was involved in, and even the larger teamsters seen with Jimmy Hoffa, they were anti-communist, and we're not really anywhere near the line of pro-communist unions.

Speaker 3Right. So there you go. So look, I've got a couple emails from people asking me if I find flip sides or whatever. But you know my I'm on the side of the truth friends. So here we go, right now here's what's interesting though While I don't think he was a who act in format it does appear that he was an informant for the keyfobber committee And that would make a lot more sense because that was a committee looking into organized crime and where do I get this crazy idea well it was in the New York times That's where I get it from the New York Times number twenty nine nineteen sixty three Chicago lawyer named Lewis cutner told the New York Times that he sent Ruby to the committee council so And to me, why is he talking to the keyfobber committee if he doesn't know anything about organized crime? And this is also related to, there's also a conversation about Ruby being an FBI informant, which we're going to get to that here in a second.

Speaker 3That's a little bit later down the list. Did you guys come across anything on the keyfobber side of things? Or is it just that New York Times article pretty much?

Speaker 0Yeah, it didn't really come up in our series. I don't remember seeing that particular article, but yeah, it was interesting to see that he's on their radar. And of course, it doesn't mean that he's anti-mob, that's not necessarily what you need to take away from the fact that he was sent to talk to the committee.

Speaker 3Yes, and that's because a lot of times these informant relationships are blessed from the top of the mafia, because you may feel like there's some level of immunity, or at least you'll know what they're going after, so you can kind of be, you have an inside man. Yeah, so all right, let's go on to let's talk about this move to Dallas. And so here's this is a big dispute point. Okay, so the things we talked about so far are not really disputed. There's really no dispute that, you know, about the Al Capone envelopes, the moving out west with Roselli, the union stuff, none of this is disputed. Now we're getting into dispute land. So these are things where you can find, you know, Fred let one and and and other folks would would dispute this certainly the war in commission to disputes this and That was their eyes Covered their eyes. Yeah. Yeah, I would say so. So yeah, here's this game. So Chicago outfit representative Paul Rollin Jones attempts to bribe Dallas Sheriff-elect Steve Guthrie, and this is in I want to say late 46 early 47 Red around there

Speaker 3Um, and basically he said, hey, look, Chicago outfits coming to Dallas, um, we're going to run a gambling operation here, and he's going to not bust us, so we're going to give you a 50% of the, of the profits. We get this guy coming in from out of town, who's, uh, from Chicago, who's going to run a restaurant and gambling front, and then it, Jones said that, who, who, who, who, who over this man is, he's not Jewish, and that, yeah, the, basically the guy, or he said he wouldn't Now this is then 22 of the 42 tapes, okay, so we have two recordings that the FBI reviews 22 tape. I left out the headline. The sheriff finds out that he's getting bribed and then he kind of does what he's supposed to do. He doesn't just take the money. He calls the police and calls the state law enforcement and they set up a sting operation and they record everything. And so that's what what's interesting about this is it is recorded and

Speaker 3They're all these records missing. 22 of 42, there are 20 that we're not listened to, and they say two were missing. This is based on the FBI report. So I wasn't able to get my head around like, okay, so what happened to the other, you know, what, 18 or whatever, you guys just didn't listen to them or what, but anyway, what's interesting is Sheriff Guthrie comes forth and says that Ruby was repeatedly named by Jones. So he later says, he later says that. The official story Paul Rollin Jones, the guy trying to bribe the sheriff, never mentioned Ruby, and not only did he not mention Ruby, he specifically said the guy wouldn't be Jewish. What do you want, right? And that is on one of the tapes. It's just we're missing all these other tapes, and the kicker is the headline, the sheriff himself says that Ruby was specifically mentioned repeatedly by Jones and that it would be on the tapes if they were to listen to it.

Speaker 3And what he said was that Ruby was the one who's going to run a restaurant with gambling upstairs. There's a guy who tenant George Butler, he's the other person who's involved. He doesn't. He's not on the same side as Sheriff Guthrie. He basically denies that Ruby was ever mentioned, but there's some reason to have pause about what about George Butler's veracity, perhaps. And that is. that Butler privately told a reporter that Ruby was involved in bribery attempts. In other words, he told a reporter the opposite of what he said to the FBI. He falsely claimed that Oswald was Ruby's illegitimate son, so he's just making up. Patently false things that no one says or believes, and when you do that, it just makes me think you're just trying to burn investigative resources or kind of put people on a different track. You want to get people off of the trail, right? So, uh, but Butler Lieutenant George Butler falsely claimed that Ruby applied for a visa to Mexico with Oswald, so he's trying to associate Ruby with Oswald, and Butler appeared visibly nervous shortly before Oswald was brought to the basement, so there's a reporter who knew Butler well and said he's a cool customer, and right before Oswald comes out he's shaking and his lips are trembling, like he knows something's going to happen.

Speaker 3highly speculative, but you throw all those things out there. It's like geez, the only guy who who comes against Guthrie kind of has some shady things going on. Now, the counterpoint is people will say, you know, Guthrie was just like the Ralph Yates thing. Guthrie was a big talker and no one believed him or whatever. They have like two or three character witnesses, somewhere in the FBI reports to say that Guthrie was like not reliable or whatever, but Why make all this up? I mean, he was the sheriff. Anyway, your thoughts on that whole scenario?

Speaker 0Yeah, I mean, as I understand the way that Guthrie came into the picture, he was a relatively new sheriff at the time that this all went down, that there had kind of been a deal in place between the last big organized crime figure in Dallas, who was a guy by the name of Benny Binion, who moved out to Vegas around this time. And I think he's the founder of the World figure in the gambling world, but he departs the scene, the sheriff switches over to this fellow Guthrie. He's kind of taking a cleaner approach and therefore, you know, gets all these guys on tape, et cetera. And so it's not surprising to me that the other dirty cops, and I don't think Guthrie lasted that long in the role as Sheriff after all of this. So it's not surprising that everybody would throw Guthrie under the bus to try to keep the gravy train rolling on the wheels of, you know, grease in the skids for the mob in Dallas.

Speaker 0And as for Butler, I mean, Yeah, he has zero credibility in my opinion because he was the guy who the mob approached in the first place to try and get the meeting with Guthrie. because he was known to be, you know, a guy with some friendliness to organize crime. And I totally agree with it. I think he was flooding the stream with a lot of horse-pucky to make a lot of noise and just put smoke up in the air to distract. cause confusion, which is something that we see again and again with these figures with various suspicious connections around the scene, including, you know, in the media and Dallas, in the Dallas Police Department, and Butler is definitely such a character.

Speaker 3So you and I look at this and we go, what do you want? The clean sort of out group, Sheriff, Guthrie comes in and he's saying that it's Ruby, even though he has nothing to gain from it at that time. And then the only person coming, that says that that's not the case is Butler, and as we just laid out, he's not credible. So the only counter, the only argument remaining is and it's not on the tapes. That's the argument. But to me, you didn't look at all the tapes, and two of them are missing entirely. You know, my inference point would be obviously that I believe Sheriff Guthrie, and I think you too, but there are people who look at the same set of facts and would agree with us on the facts as laid out, maybe they would disagree on some little slight things here and there. And they go, yes, so what? It doesn't say Ruby, it's done. You know what I mean? So,

Speaker 0Yeah, and as for the fact that Joan said that the man would not be Jewish or Italian like come on He's he's talking to what he perceives as a Dallas good old boy. All right with presumed prejudice They're like don't worry don't worry got through this isn't gonna be a conspicuous thing You're not gonna get any egg on your face. It's not gonna be a Jew. It's not gonna be an Italian This will be a clean business here, you know, you just got to think about context with these statements and not take it so literally.

Speaker 3Right. So just to add a little to sprinkle some other little facts related to this, you know, was Ruby the Chicago man in Dallas that Paul Roll and Jones was talking about. Paul Roll and Jones said that Ruby was vouched for by outfit figures. So in other words, you know, the guy approaching the sheriff said Ruby was vouched for by by Chicago outfit figures. and Paul Neal knows Lebiola, who both said that Ruby was, quote, all right, Ruby told Dallas businessmen, Giles Miller, that he was directed to move to Dallas, which I think is a pretty major fact. Chuck Giancana, who, you know, who knows if Sam Giancana's half brothers reliable or not. But according to him, he says Sam Giancana personally sent Ruby to Dallas. that's coming from Sam Jr. and Connor's brother. His close friends were Chicago outfit enforcers, Dave Yaris, and Lenny Patrick. So again, we're having this this question is, is Ruby closely enough associated to the mafia that that could have been what was behind him killing Oswald?

Speaker 3This is really what we're getting at. And he doesn't have to be a made man. But he would need to have a lot of touch points and associations. And what I just laid out to me sort of satisfies that. Your thoughts?

Speaker 0Yeah, for sure. And with respect to Paul Rollen Jones, there's also some evidence that Paul Rollen Jones, who was caught a few times for drug smuggling, particularly opium smuggling. And maybe this goes back to your trinkets business question, one of his schemes for smuggling opium was he had a metal pipes business and he was stuffing the pipes with opium and that was a joint venture that Eva Grant, Jack Ruby's sister and Jack Ruby and I think one of the other siblings too had a cut on and you know of course they denied they knew that drugs were involved These guys, Yaris and Patrick, you know, you say it forces, I think it's important for the listener to understand these guys were up to their eyeballs, like they were actually killers and they were directly in the organizational structure of Sam Giancana in Chicago. where, you know, you have the Italian capo at the head of the organization and then the neighborhoods are run by guys with the same ethnicity as the folks in the neighborhood.

Speaker 0So, Yaris and Patrick whose real name was Leonard Levine were both Jewish guys on the southwest side of Chicago in the neighborhood where they grew up with Jack Ruby. and I imagine that we'll hear their names again in a few minutes when we start to talk about the summer and fall of 1963.

Speaker 3Tell me more about what they were doing in the summer of fall of 1963 because I don't know that I went that deep on yours and Patrick and that may be an area where you may have more coverage.

Speaker 0Yeah, sure. So, Yaris Patrick and Jones and another name I'll throw into the mix from the same Chicago mob connected milieu of these Jewish kids who grow up to become real tough guys is Al Gruber, another name. So, in the summer and fall of 63, they are in very regular contact with Ruby in some cases after an apparent break that they haven't talked to each other for a while, but they're making phone calls and in November of 63, what's really interesting is that Al Gruber and Paul Roland and they're meeting up with Jack Ruby at this time and wouldn't you know it that their reasons for being in Dallas are insane like they make no sense unless it's to see Jack Ruby about something because what Joan says is, uh, Oh yeah, you know, I was just passing through, let me, let me see because I get, I let me just pull it up in my notes because I forget which one was where but one of them said he was nearby Dallas because he was in Alabama and the other one's went by Dallas because he was in Joplin, Missouri now if anybody has a map of the United States.

Speaker 0Those are not exactly what you'd call a hopover when you're driving it. So I think we maybe mentioned how long of a drive it would have been, but they're suddenly in very constant contact with Jack Ruby. And, you know, he mentions this even to the Warren Commission. He says, yeah, Albert Gruber, he was a real bad guy when I knew him in Chicago, but then I saw him again recently and, oh, he's totally reformed now.

Speaker 3So when we get to the phone calls, some of those calls were to Yaris and Patrick and Alburober. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 0Okay, got it. Yeah, to Yaris and Patrick, he's calling them a lot. And Gruber and Jones, he actually is with them in person, in her flesh, in Dallas, in November. And Gruber has even more mob connections. again through the sort of Hoffa arm of this indicate operations. He's working in a metal trading business. Again, kind of similar to this trinkets type of stuff. I think he's selling cutlery or pots and pans or something like that. And some cover right but he finds himself in Dallas with Ruby and there's really not any good reason for him being there and they go away that Ruby describes it to the Warren Commission is you know he just happened to come through and it was a social visit and I gave him I promised to send him a dog. I was one of Ruby's things he liked to he liked to

Speaker 3you'll enjoy it, here's the new responsibility. And so we have all those relationships, but hey, maybe they're just relationships, but the thing is, we're not as you just laid out and as we'll get to here in a second. We're not just saying these are people he knew throughout his life. We're saying that these people were talking to him. He was talking to them before and two of them visited him in person. So anyway, Dallas, the night club. I want to talk about the carousel club and who really owned it. His silent partner was Ralph Paul and then, you know, Paul owned 50% of the carousel stock, but he never received any profits. He never received any distributions and he didn't know who owned the other 50%. And the source of Paul's money that he contributed was unknown. I mean, he owned like a drive-through, you know, a drive-in, I think a restaurant. But he wasn't like independently super wealthy.

Speaker 3And Ruby's clubs consistently lost money but somehow stayed open. So this is again, and one of these end-fference things where it's like, let's look at what's really going on. But there's not like a lot of great, hard documentation around this, but isn't it kind of strange that we don't know who owns the thing or where the money's going?

Speaker 0it is strange. And, you know, reportedly there's gambling going on in the clubs at, you know, off-books type of transactions that might be beyond what's reported in the clubs income. And there's also some indications that Ruby was selling pornography out of the club as well. And I think he was pretty adamant that he did not allow any prostitution on the premises. But when you have a establishment of the sort that the Kerasel Club was, you never know if perhaps off the premises. There's also some Hanky Panky going on.

Speaker 3Yeah. So aside from the ownership of the club, Ruby was arrested nine times when he was in Dallas between 1947 and 1963. Nine arrests and the charges included assault and pistol whipping an officer, but the worst thing he ever got was a small fine. and he never did an angel time. Yes, he was close with the Dallas police and he knew a lot of them and he let them come to the club and would get them free drinks and stuff and you could really argue, I think you really could argue that he just wanted to be in the good races of the cops as a nightclub owner and ask somebody who may need them because he's You know, it's the nature of the business as you could get some drunk patrons who would be a problem pretty easily, so that's sort of the official story argument people make. But nine arrests, man, that's a lot. Just one more thing. It's like, do you believe it or not? And it's not like there's a clear smoking gun document, but it certainly sucks as the kids say to me.

Speaker 0Yeah, that's a lot of arrests. And especially the pistol whipping a police officer that the cops are not too fond of people that beat up their own. So yeah.

Speaker 3Yeah, usually I could get you a little bit of time. All right, let's pivot to gun running. So, to me, I- I'm trying to figure out where to place this because, you know, when you say this person's running guns, you kind of think more of like international, you know, weapons, dealer type person, or you think maybe like the CIA, you don't necessarily think mafia, but that might just be me how I'm sort of thinking about it. We've got all these instances that I'll go through of, proof. I would say that Ruby was running guns. I don't know if we know precisely who he was getting the guns from. Although maybe there's a clue in the form of Thomas Eli Davis who was known by the CIA, but before I get to the, I guess let me go through the list first and then I'll I'll pause to you for you can chime in on the gun running. So okay, number one, James Beard, saw Ruby storing weapons in Kima, Texas and those weapons were then transported to Mexico and delivered to Castro via his personal boat.

Speaker 3Ruby's involved in actually transferring the weapons. So that's There's a pilot named Blaney Mack Johnson, who identified Ruby as arranging flights to smuggle weapons. Then there's this woman named Mary Woodard, there's an FBI report from her and her daughter. And her brother, Mary Woodard's brother, this guy James Woodard, he used to know Ruby in Dallas. He was a cop in Dallas and he met Ruby there. Then he moved to Islamarada, Florida. Well, his sister, Mary, is visiting him. And while she's there visiting him, she meets this guy who his name is Jack. He was observed with a trunk full of weapons by Mary. was hanging out with James Woodard when he was drinking one night and he sort of spilled the beans that yeah we're running guns to Cuba me and me and Jack and then of course when Mary and her daughter Dolores saw Ruby on TV shooting Oswald both of them said it was the same So then we have Robert McEwen, and McEwen, this is the same guy who an Oswald look alike.

Speaker 3Maybe Oswald himself visited trying to buy weapons, McEwen kind of got fame for being friends with Castro because the CIA was playing both sides for a period of time and was running guns to Castro before and during the revolution. During Ruby's alleged gun smuggling activity, that's kind of how he got to know what Ruby was up to, he was over in Baytown. And Ruby contacted McEwen in 1959, seeking help with Cuban detainees. Later attempted to obtain an introduction to Fidel Castro but didn't follow up. And of course, after the assassination, McEwen identifies this man as Jack Ruby, and I went into detail in the episode of, you know, he says his name's Rubenstein, right? There's a lot of clues that give away who it is, and then he identifies it, Ruby. So then we have these admissions from Ruby. He warned his attorney Tom Howard about exposure he may have from running guns. He named a man named Davis as a gun running associate and CIA knew Thomas Eli Davis III as an anti-castro arms trainer.

Speaker 3Ruby psychiatrist Dr. Warner Tutor noted that Ruby's guilt that Ruby basically was guilty about sending guns to Cuba because he thought he was helping communist. and retired Cuban general Fabian Escalante confirmed Ruby's gun running role. So to me, all that I just laid out makes it clear to me that he was involved in running guns. One more thing to doubt that he's just alone not, because man, that wasn't really part of the story at all, that the Warren Commission told. My question to you is, is that also your assessment, and on whose behalf do you think he was running those guns?

Speaker 0Yeah, I mean, I think, so there's the guns and the jeeps that they're kind of confused, you know, they kind of mix together. Some people talk about running guns, some people talk about running jeeps, some people talk about both. I think that there is enough there that it's highly likely to have happened with respect to the reactions of everybody involved and especially rubies, statements, which are on the record to his lawyers that that was kind of the biggest concern that he had after he got arrested was that the Cuba stuff was going to get out and he was very concerned about this. It's also we'll talk about Jolly West later, but there's also a line in some draft documents that my friend Max Arvo, who we had in our series, found in the Jolly West archives, that there's a line about Jack Ruby having concerns about his and regrets about his Cuban activities, and Jolly West put a red line through that.

Speaker 0sentence in this draft document to keep it out of the public record. So just again, and we see this time and time again in JFK research, wherever people are taking extra pains to keep something out of the public record, that is definitely a red flag for my point of view. and Ruby's Cuban activities are certainly up there. And I think also, I always pronounce it Mickey Allen, but maybe Mickey was interviewed by the British researcher Anthony Summers and told him that Jack Ruby was a mob guy and he got real nervous when he was asked about the Cuban operations. but essentially admitted to it being involved in it. So, I think that there's multiple independent sources plus the real anxiety and desire to cover it up that to me get pushes it over the line into something that very likely happened. And I'm not the only person that thinks that bird-griffin and his partner in the Warren Commission, Hubert, yeah, Leon, Hubert, or U-Bail.

Speaker 0We're also concerned about this and they wrote about it in their March of 64 memo to Lee Rankin, where they set out all of these loose ends that they feel had not been adequately addressed in their investigation of Jack Ruby, but yet the commission never interviewed McIan.

Speaker 3Exactly. Exactly. And I pronounced the name that same way. And then I found the his HSCA testimony is available. It's actually as a full podcast that Lone Gunman put out while they go. It's on their their feed. And in that testimony, he says his name is McEwen. And I'm like, oh, wow, I never want to thought that. That's what a weird way to say your name. Okay, so yeah, if you go back and listen to the any of the things when I was in Louisiana I got pretty much every single pronunciation wrong when I went out when I had a chance I chose the wrong one, but that's okay So all right, let's move on to Ruby as an FBI informant So he what this is not disputed. This is absolutely the case Ruby contacted the FBI on eight occasions between March and October of 1959. He was approached by the FBI to become an informant because they thought he may have knowledge of criminal elements in Dallas. Due to his nightclub ownership, you know, it's probably likely that

Speaker 3Ruby didn't just go and do this on his own, although if your position is, Ruby had no relationships with the Mafia whatsoever, and wouldn't have nothing to worry about being in a form. He would not have to worry about betraying anyone's trust, because he didn't even know anyone in the Mafia. If that's your position, then whatever. But, but the point is, as you brought up earlier, the mere fact of him being an informant doesn't mean, oh, look at this guy, he's too face, he's turning, that may have been and approved informant relationship. Now, the most interesting thing to me about this, because, again, like, the fact of him being an informant, I'll actually buy it, even though, to me, I kind of want you to know something, you can't, I know it. But if you see this alone, I get it. I get why you would think that this is kind of a nothing burger. So my question then is, why did the Warren report not mention it at all?

Speaker 3It seems like they should have mentioned that if it was nothing burger.

Speaker 0Yeah, I think that FBI didn't have a lot of substance that they received from Ruby's various trips to go and talk to them. Right.

UNKNOWNRight.

Speaker 0again that almost suggests that maybe he did have an agenda and that the FBI just wasn't buying it for whatever reason that they didn't weren't buying what he was selling.

Speaker 3Right. Lewis McWillie, let's talk about McWillie. He was Ruby's closest mob connection most likely, although he had so many, but I say that because McWillie himself told the HSCA that he was one of Ruby's closest friends, that's you know, not nothing.

Speaker 0So Ruby told the Warren Commission, I idolized McWillie. He is a pretty nice boy and I happened to be idolizing him. So doesn't get much clearer than that.

Speaker 3Alright, and so if you're someone who you go, hey, I've heard what you guys have said so far. You don't know anything else about Ruby's relationship with the mafia. You're like, look, I don't know. I'm kind of on the fence. What else do you have? We'll check this out. So this guy, so you just laid out what Ruby said about him. McWillie said he's one of Ruby's closest friends. So who is McWillie? Well he's a world-class gambler. tied to myor landscape in Johnny Ricelli and many others he worked in cuban casinos for landscape in the thirties and forties and then he met ruby he moved to Dallas and he was operating some illegal gambling clubs there in Dallas for a few years in the fifties that's where he met ruby ruby and they became close. McWillie later worked to went back to Cuba and he worked at Then in 1961, Roselli, Johnny Roselli, sent Lewis McWilly, Jack Ruby's best friend, according to one of his closest friends, according to McWilly.

Speaker 3He sent him to go monitor Frank Sinatra at the Kalneva Lodge on behalf of Sam G. and Kanna. So again, they asked this guy they go look I want you to keep an eye on Sinatra on behalf of the big boss you think he's just nobody and you think rubies just incidental these friends of this guy like goodness anyway so McWillie later worked at mob connected casinos and Las Vegas after that so that's overwhelming to me but i understand that there are people who look at that and they go so what But anyway, your thoughts?

Speaker 0I just wonder what could make a person ask so what about all of that? Like, you know, Rosalie, Giancana. Myolansky, these are the top members of Organized Crime who are connected to the CIA directly in the operations to assassinate Castro. Like, these aren't random people. These aren't just criminals or crooks of some random stripe. These are the guys. And McWillie is clearly loyal to them and beholden to them as his entire career trajectory we're talking about 30-year period here from the 30s all the way into the 60s It's overwhelming evidence like you said. I just don't see how it leaves a shadow of a doubt and the fact that Jack Ruby is idolizing him and is Well as we'll talk about you know going to visit him in various places throughout the world It's just a lot of very, very hard evidence in the Jack Ruby is a mob guy story.

Speaker 3Thanks, though. All right, so let's continue down that road. So we talked about McWillie. I want to talk specifically about the 1959 Ruby Cuba trip where he went to go see McWillie. So he traveled to Havana in August, in September of 1959, the trip was arranged and paid for by McWillie. Ruby stayed in Cuba for eight to ten days according to him, but documents show that the trip was really closer to a month and that he likely left to go to Miami and then came back. So I wonder, you know, what that little side trip was about, the Warren report acknowledged the existence of the trip, which good for, you know, honestly good for them to acknowledge something even happened. But they, they labeled it purely social. So he just went to go see this guy who we described as being this Uber connected mob guy, and he's my buddy. And yeah, I don't like the beach, and I don't like gambling is what Rubey said.

Speaker 3I don't even like gambling, hilarious. And then he goes to, we're exposed to believe that he just goes to Cuba for fun, then on this fun trip. And when is it that he goes? Just a few months after Castro took over, that's all. It's not like there's going to be this great, you know, problem-free visit, I would imagine. So anyway, McWillie was the pit boss at the Traficante Control of Riviera, Casino, and the Warren Commission staff never investigated any rumors of any illegal activities in Cuba. So they just said, yeah, he went there. And so a lot of what I'm covering is from the HSEA's... Dig into this before we get to this Santos Traffa Conte and did Ruby visit Traffa Conte You mentioned that he went to several places. You weren't unpacked any other Travel that Ruby may have done with McWillie and Anything on the Cuba trip aside from the prison?

Speaker 0Yeah, I mean at the risk of getting ahead of ourselves Specifically was considering his November 17th trip to Vegas.

Speaker 3Yes, okay sure. Oh, I McWillie was there

Speaker 0Right. Yeah.

Speaker 3Yes. Okay. Got you. On the Cuba side of things, is that HSCA said eight to 10 days, but the, I believe the past, something, I don't know if there was the passport or some of the travel documents made it look like it was a longer trip. Anything you think that's important about that trip that I haven't mentioned yet?

Speaker 0Not really. I mean, I think that the trip is another example, first of all, like you mentioned, of Ruby just lying about stuff. Like he's, if you read all of his testimony and statements and reported statements, he and his siblings too, they're lying all the time and they're not any good at it. They tie themselves into circles, they tie themselves into knots, they contradict themselves constantly, and this is just one of so, so many examples, as you read through that stuff, that, like, how can you take any significance from a denial of Jack Ruby about the significance of his cubitrip when he's making these blatantly false statements or another thing he said I think about the trip was, yeah, I left because I didn't speak Spanish. And it's like, you are in the U.S. Mafia controlled casino. This has been a playground for Americans for the greater part of 30 years by this point since the mob went down to Havana and put down their shop.

Speaker 0So it's not believable what he's saying on just the slightest of inspection. It falls apart like a house of carts.

Speaker 3Sure, sure. So let's let's pivot over to the Santos Traffacante prison visit. So Traffacante, we've talked about him a lot on solving JFK, he was imprisoned by Fidel Castro at Trescornia prison in June of 1959. And there's a found conflicting information about why he was With Batista, Castro's predecessor, just basically that he wasn't loyal to Castro. And some of it was that he was running with trafficking drugs, and that's why he was put in jail. I learned in the recap and rebuttals with Lou Ferante, you may already know this, that Traficante continued to traffic heroin and other drugs from Cuba, even after Castro was in power. And that Traficante had a backdoor deal with Castro.

Speaker 0Yeah, I had heard that and, you know, it's another one of these things that people think very black and white about historical issues that really have a lot more nuance to them. When Castro first took power and this kind of connects with Ruby's gun running and Jeep running, The CIA itself, which later became Castro's biggest enemy, and would be assassin, was trying to get friendly with Castro, and it's not only Jack Ruby doing this stuff, but in, I think some of the interesting things from the Mary Havristic book, a woman I know, that she's talking about these female pilots that got real friendly with Castro in the lead-up to and around the time of the Cuban Revolution, who were also trafficking aircraft and other weapons to Castro for both espionage reasons and to ingratiate the CIA and the Americans to him. So that tracks for sure.

Speaker 3Yeah, the CIA was just looking for some moderate rebels probably, so.

Speaker 0Anyway, ain't not new under the sun.

Speaker 3Amen. Trescornia, it's pretty nice, it's prisons, like a minimum security, detention facility. But the question is, and kind of what's been put forth in a lot of the conspiracy literature, is that Ruby was sent to Cuba to get Traficante out of jail. And there is some conversation where Ruby's talking about the person who visits McHughin that was Ruby, is talking about trying to get three people out of prison in Cuba, but that's in January and February of 59. It just doesn't line up with one traffic contest in prison. So even though I wanted to make that puzzle piece fit, it doesn't. But There's a separate question of did Ruby visit Traficante in prison. And that one while I didn't land on, yes, he definitely did. The official story itself is maybe. So the official story is maybe after reading the HSEA. So Lewis McWally admits So remember, Ruby, he's staying with McWillie in Cuba. And McWillie goes to visit Trescornia, and while he's there, he sees Trapicante.

Speaker 3He says he saw him one or two times while he was there. And he also, McWillie, told the HSCA, that it was possible that Ruby went with him. So there you go. British journalist John William Hudson said that Ruby visited Traffa Conte in prison and, you know, of course, Traffa Conte then denied that when he spoke to the HSA. But it is possible because Ruby's travel dates overlap with when Traffa Conte was in prison. So, We don't have proof that Ruby bailed traffic on day out, but it's a coin toss as to whether or not he physically went with McWillie to visit traffic on day in prison. I don't know why Hudson would make that up, but you don't really need this to prove anything, but it's just one more cherry on top.

Speaker 0And I think there would be significance for a mere visit, even if it's not like getting him out, because Traficante is presumably still running his empire. Like this is a guy with a lot going on in Florida. He's got to keep, as any time, anybody who's seen their fair share of Mafia movies knows, like if one guy is vulnerable, a lot of sharks are going to circle around and try to take his stuff. So whatever the case may be, if it's to get him out or to just visit and convey a message or whatever the purpose, if there was that visit, which there's enough there, especially the McWillie angle. Because McWillie, I think it's pretty clear that he was contacting Traficante, while Traficante was incarcerated. And, by a new window like that given the closeness of Ruby and McWillie and Ruby is with McWillie on this trip like whatever McWillie is up to Ruby is going to tag along. It's his cradle for God's sakes so it seems reasonably likely that they met up and whatever the purpose of it was it's not they're not planning a bake sale.

Speaker 3McWillie told the HSCA that he knew that they asked, well, did you know Traffa Conte? And he said, well, if he would see me in public, he would say hello to me and say my name and come shake my hand, but I didn't know him.

Speaker 0He's such a classic mob response.

Speaker 3Anyway, so, okay, let's pivot on to Ruby's ties to Carlos Marcello's organization. So, now we're getting into the mechanics of, did the hit on behalf of the mafia. What does that look like? And through whom? Who would have relayed that information or that assignment as it were? So Dallas was within Carlos Marcelo's territory. He was Louisiana boss, but he also had Dallas. I'm sorry, he also had Texas. In Dallas, there's you know there's our witnesses informants that talked about rubies closeness with savello but he also spent a tent extensive time with with campy sea especially at the Egyptian lounge the restaurant which is still there a mockingbird lane today and uh... visited there and was pretty good little pricey but pretty awesome that still there and still in business um... anyway uh... he was at campy seas the night before the Kennedy assassination Ruby's roommate testified that Cam PC was one of Ruby's three closest friends.

Speaker 3And guess what? The first person to visit Ruby in jail after Oswald was killed by Ruby. Was Cam PC? Ruby also knew Carlos Marcelo's brothers because they operated the Jefferson music company that was a legitimate business interest of his selling mostly juke boxes Billiards as well. Another point is that Marcelo may have had control of the carousel club. So this all comes from the Jack van Laningham Audio recordings the Camtex Operation. Are you happy to Camtex did you guys cover that on yours?

Speaker 0No, we didn't not not nearly I don't think we covered it all actually.

Speaker 3All right, so let's touch on that for just a little bit.

UNKNOWNSo

Speaker 3Marcello goes to prison and the thing he goes to prison for is a brie lab I forgot the exact details of it, but it's some mafia racketeering stuff he ends up in prison and While he's there, the Fed starts to think that, you know, is this guy still running his business as he's still, you know, being the boss while he's in prison. And to find that out, they realized there was this guy named Jack Van Laningham, who befriended Marcelo organically, like they, they actually became friends. Then the prison warden approached Van Laningham to see if he'd It's like, how funny, just on the personal level. So this whole thing, this whole Camtex operation, and then this Carlos Marcelo conversation, maybe proof that Marcelo confessed to it, now did he actually do it, is a different conversation. It all happened because there's some prison warden going I'm gonna call the FBI. They're gonna love this. Oh, man I'm gonna make it a promotion It's just interesting because it all came from the warden, but anyway the FBI did in fact They moved van landing him into Marcelo's cell

Speaker 3And then they bugged everything, and they had lots of hours of tape recordings, which are still in the national archives, allegedly, or in the FBI archives, and we still don't have access to them, and here's the headline, Marcelo told Van Lanyham that his organization controlled the carousel club, and he said that Ruby was just a manager. He also said that Ruby had been stealing money from him. and that he summoned Ruby to Louisiana to Churchill Farms to confront him about the theft and then Ruby begs for his life. Now, you know, there's a suggestion that's sort of an implied suggestion that Ruby owed a favor and that favor that was, you know, called in was for Ruby to kill Oswald. So, you know, the big takeaway here is we got to get those camp tax records. So if I do Well, I went all of the records, but it's ridiculous we don't have the Camtax records, you know, there's that's whether or not what he's saying is true is a debated thing, but we should at least be able to hear what he said, you know what I mean?

Speaker 0First sure, first sure, low hanging fruit.

Speaker 3low-hanging fruit Marcelo goes on to say that he ordered the hit but as you know and you know look I'm gonna weird think because I go so deep on the topic I'm on like so so deep but then like I even look at the other topics until I get to him so sorry big blind spots but but the point is you know in the case just because Marcelo says that he did it he made that could be like subjectively true in his mind and there's a lot of other things happening at the same time so like did he fund the exiles after Kennedy stopped funding them because he wanted them to stop yes you know was he tight with fairy who was tight with are the all these Cuban exiles yeah it's a complicated mess is the point because everyone's all working together you know

Speaker 0Right, and sometimes they're working together at cross purposes. Like, it's not always definitely not always a smooth operation, and they don't always gel when they cross streams on occasion.

Speaker 3Let's get to those pre-assassination fun calls. There's a whole thing of... a whole body of evidence conversation about did Ruby suddenly start having way more long distance phone calls close to the assassination. And the HSCA did a deep dive on this and what they found was troubling, I would say. So his call volume did increase dramatically in October and then even more in November of 1963. He was averaging about 40 long distance calls a It jumped up to 85 in October, and then in the first three weeks of November, it was 115 calls. So, the mere increase in calls alone, I would say, is suspicious as worth looking into, but then it's improving anything. So, what are we talking about here? Who's he calling? So, the answer is, he's calling mafia guys, and also union guys, because there's a big overlap, turns out. So, he called Ralph Paul. frequently, sometimes five times a day. He started to call Lewis McWilly with increased frequency.

Speaker 3He called Irwin Weener, a major Midwest mafia finance year who refused to cooperate with the FBI after the assassination. He called Marcelo Lieutenant, Nofio Piccora, even though that was a short call, I think he was really trying to call Marcelo Associate, Harold Tannenblom, so. Oh, sorry, wrong Marsello guy, let me talk to the person I was trying to call. He called Hatha Associates Barney Baker and Dusty Miller, and he called Carlos Marsello operative Frank Karachi and Marsello's brother Pete Marsello on multiple occasions. So it doesn't look great. Now the counterpoint is, hey, this is nothing because Ruby actually had a beef with the Union, specifically the American Guild of variety artist, Agva, and he's trying to call all these people frantically to get help with his Union problem. That's what's going on. And so there is a little, there's a grain of truth to that argument. There's another, another guy that operated a strip club in Dallas, and he was able, he successfully was able to pull off having amateur nights, to have amateur dancers,

Speaker 3so that he didn't have to pay the union wages to the professional dancers and wine steins, I think. Wine steins, yeah. So Ruby basically was mad that he couldn't replicate what wine steins was doing because he couldn't find any, he was, it wasn't able to recruit any amateurs in his club. So he, wanted the the guild of variety artists to either enforce against Weinstein for breaking the rules or to make it totally illegal to do and you know make it clear that you can't have amateur dancers. That's the issue that he was all up in arms about. And he did make some calls on that. But the problem is, the HSCA zoomed into the 115 calls in November, only 10 of them were for Agva. So the other 105, which is an increase from the 40 in October, were not. So the Union dispute alone does not account for this massive increase in calls.

Speaker 0Yeah, I mean, there's no way that the Union, I think it's a convenient cover story and one that is, like you said, it's a real issue that he was actually facing and it ties into with the fact that at this time, he's in a great deal of debt and he owed something like the equivalent of almost a half a million dollars in today's, you know, justed for inflation dollars to the IRS alone, not to mention the other debts that he might have had, including intangible debts of the sort that you discussed to Carlos Marcello. So, And I also would add, you know, besides the names that you mentioned, well, to drill down a little bit Barney Barker, this is Jimmy Hoffa's main enforcer. This was a 370 pound guy who's always at Hoffa's right hand and, you know, allegedly, committed murders for Hoffa. And Barker, at the same period of time, was talking to Dave Yaris, Ruby's old pal. Ruby also had made calls to Dave Yaris in addition to the folks that you mentioned.

Speaker 0And he also talked to Lenny Patrick, who is another guy who allegedly committed murders for Jimmy Hoffa. So yes, it's true these guys have some generic connections to the union scene because they're all in the Hoffa orbit, but at the same time not all of the people that he called have any connection like another is a mob connected professional gambler called Frank Goldstein who Ruby knew and allegedly hadn't talked to for 20 years before November of 1963 and just decides to ring him up and and see hey Frank Goldstein has professional gambling trading you so that amidst these visits from Jones and from Gruber. He's also calling a woman who, I don't think her name has come up yet, Candy Bar. Another one of these sort of mob adjacent ladies, she was a longtime girlfriend of the L.A. mob figure Mickey Cohen. who had been a friend of rubies for a while since she was dancing in Dallas. She was also an exotic dancer before she got locked up for marijuana possession by Judge Joe Brown.

Speaker 0represented by Melvin Belli, but there's way too much for these all to be related to the Agva issue, because also just think about it practically. If you have this issue with the union, how many phone calls are you really like, what's going to move the needle for you? If 115 calls, So yeah, it's a big, and I think that there's even an anecdote that Bobby Kennedy saw the list of Jack Ruby's phone calls and said, my God, these are all the names that these are all the names on my list from his days on the Keefover Commission, you know, enforcing the law against organized crime.

Speaker 3That's wild. So one thing you just said, uh... it's really important that i did not bring up in the episodes candy bar whose boyfriend was Mickey Cohen was he that was he the boss at the time in l.a. yeah he he was the kind of the lanski uh... associated operational boss over there so she gets in trouble for for weed and her lawyer is melvin belive who later would be Ruby's lawyer. So I was again, back to my conversation with Luke Farante. He was giving an anecdote and he was saying one way you can tell of people were associated is if they have the same lawyer. That's a dead giveaway. So if you want to make it look like you're not affiliated with someone, you've got to make sure you have different lawyers. So I mean... That's well, there you go something that I think is sort of common sense, but but yes Wow, that's that that is something maybe it's a coincidence, don't could be a coincidence Well, yeah, she was also another recipient of a dog from Jack Ruby

Speaker 0when she was on house arrest, he brought her some puppies. It's a nice guy. Come on. He did it for Jackie. He's a nice guy. He's given dogs away.

Speaker 3That's a ease. He doesn't want her to have to deal with the trial yet. We'll get to that. Let's talk about something. This is a whole new thing that I didn't know about at all until going deep on Jack Ruby. the alleged trip to Las Vegas November 16th the 17th of 1963 that weekend. So this is the weekend before the assassination. There are several FBI reports from about 10 people or so that place ruby at the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas days before the assassination. Multiple informants said that one of the hotel employees who personally handled Ruby's phone bill when it was over that's one of the people who said that Ruby was there. They're also the hotel records from Ruby's stay later disappeared and he was seen playing golf with fineburg and he even gave his card to someone that was how they remembered Jack Ruby. Of course fineburg denied And what's really interesting about this whole trip is that Ruby, what you alluded to, Ruby owed about $44,000 in 1963 money, which is close to half a million dollars today, to the IRS.

Speaker 3But when he came back from Las Vegas, he or let's just say the Tuesday after that weekend, he told his tax attorney that he had a new source of money to pay the IRS debt. This is days before Kennedy's assassinated. To me, there's so many FBI reports on it. This would've been something before if you just told me this, I'd be like, that's crazy. You know what I'm never talks about that? More people will talk about it if it was a thing, but I'm putting this in the, I think it's a thing category. What about you?

Speaker 0it's definitely a thing. And I think he was also reportedly with Lou McWillie at the Thunderbird hotel. That's another landscape affiliated property where McWillie was working at that time. You know, by this time, McWillie was out of Cuba as was the rest of the mob, obviously, in November of 63. And he was set up there running the floor at the Thunderbird for landscape. and meets with Ruby again on the 17th of November, the less than a week before the hit, and two days before he comes back with his payday.

Speaker 3So it's kind of all, I mean, there's a straight line for all this if, you know, to me, but Let's talk about, so we've talked about so far Ruby's life leading up to the act of him killing Oswald. Let's talk about afterwards and the whole Jolly West angle and some of Ruby's confessions. That's all we have left on the document. I guess the prerequisite for that is a quick introduction of MK Ultra generally. Do you want to touch an MK Ultra? I know you've done probably more work on this than I have.

Speaker 0Yeah, sure. I mean, I think maybe your listeners have a generic familiarity, so I won't, I could probably spend an hour, but I'll keep it. I'll keep it to my short list of the most overlooked or misunderstood things about MK Ultra. So it was of course a CIA project, or actually to control human behavior and to understand different ways of manipulation of human behavior. It was not the first CIA intervention in this field of study. It took, form after there'd already been project Bluebird that was launched in response to the allegedly phony confessions of Cardinal Monsente in Hungary to the communist authorities in Hungary that the CIA thought this guy definitely was brainwashed and this is where the word kind of enters the lexicon. And after that was Artichoke named after Alan Dellis's favorite vegetable, actually. Apparently that's what it was, that's how it got its name. And then MK Ultra is kind of both of those on huge amounts of steroids.

Speaker 0It was at the time the largest project of the CIA up to that point starts in the early 50s. it is spread across the entire United States through a massive, massive network of private front organizations. So it's not like the CIA goes up and hires these people and says, hey, you're working for the CIA. Now go and torture some people and see how they react. They're setting up these fronts all over the country. They're buying wings of hospitals for from places like Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where the CIA financed the construction of an entire wing of the hospital on the condition that they have access to it to run tests on unwitting human subjects. And it's one of the, things under study was of course the use of LSD and other hallucinogens, but that wasn't it. There was also hypnosis, there was also stress and sleep deprivation and all kinds of various involving drugs involving, you know, what we would recognize as torture and other techniques and many of them we don't know about at all because Dick Helms ordered the files to be destroyed in 1973.

Speaker 0Dick Helms, the same Dick Helms, who was one of the CIA's liaisons to the Warren Commission, during the investigation of the Kennedy assassination, who was rewarded for his service by being elevated to the directorship of the agency. So it's a vast project and it's one that, you know, there's this saying every accusation is a confession, I think MK Ultra is an encapsulation of that principle where the CIA is pointing the finger at the communists for doing these types of experiments allegedly, which there's either the Soviet Union nor the Chinese Communist Party had anything like the scale of operations at MKL Tritid. Meanwhile, of course, the CIA is employing not only... you're born corn fed American psychopaths, like Jolly West, but also Nazis and members of Japan's unit 731, you know, these are our enemies from World War II who were brought over under secret cover. through Operation Paperclip and other similar projects to brain drain from fascism and to put those nefarious skills to use on behalf of Uncle Sam and one of the darkest chapters of our country's history that is even to this day so deeply covered up that it's shameful that it's not more common knowledge.

Speaker 3Right, and it was exposed in 1974 by Seymour Hirsch in the New York Times, and remember everybody, all the vast majority of M.K. Ultrafiles were destroyed in 1973, so the absence of a file means nothing. It was probably destroyed, right? So, um, Let's talk about Jolly West and how he fits into that. So he was a practitioner of MK Ultra. He kind of, his claim to fame was after the Korean war there were some POWs who admitted to basically using illegal weapons, like biological weapons. I believe it was in Korea and...

Speaker 0you know the chemical and germ warfare. Yeah.

Speaker 3The official story remains that those people were just cray and they were just had been brainwashed to say that. There is, you know, it's disputed as to whether or not, you know, woo. there may be true that we actually did do those things. Do you know if you looked into that at all?

Speaker 0Yeah, I would really direct listeners to the work of Jeffrey K. He's a psychologist who has a substack called hidden histories. and we had him on the pod, we actually didn't talk about this issue, but we talked about the psychiatrists that the Warren Commission hired for kind of mysterious and really unclear purposes, but he's done immense amount of work on this, has looked at archival sources from all of the countries involved. and has really run it to ground, and I find his work to very persuasively make the case that indeed the U.S. did engage in chemical and biological warfare in Korea, and that, you know, some of these confessions were sincere confessions by the airmen.

Speaker 3Sure. Well, and I agree. The Jeffrey K episode you guys did was great. Definitely check out his work. But Jolly West gains his notoriety within the CIA for successfully deprogramming these Korean war POWs to make them say no. We didn't really do that. Then they just made us say it. So that kind of got him on Sidney Gottlieb's radar. And you know, there's sort of the lore of it all, but let's talk about what we have, which was we have letters from Sydney Gottlieb under his alias, which I mentioned in the episode, but I forget I've taught my head. to Jolly West, encouraging him in his MK Ultra Project. And specifically, there's one where he, where West lets him know, hey, I'm going to take this job at the University of Oklahoma. Which, by the way, let me just say it quickly, Rebuttal, I called it Oklahoma University, because there's football teams called OU. But apparently, it's the University of Oklahoma, even though they call themselves OU, which is non-sensical, but University of Oklahoma is where Jolly last month.

Speaker 3Anyway, the point is, if he's just somebody who doesn't matter, then why is he writing to the head of the CIA's technical services division, Sydney Gottlieb, going, hey, is it you're you're going with me moving to Oklahoma and taking this job to head to psychiatry department? Also, when he's in Oklahoma, he, works on this elephant named Tusco uh... forget what zoo Oklahoma city zoo hands up uh... he gives the elephant lsd because that's you know that's what you do you give elephant lsd is for fun and he kills the elephant and it turns out that the bill for the dead elephant the elephant damages were paid by none other than the cia But, you know, so to me, that proves that as late as 1962, Jolly West is in fact working for the CIA because they're paying for the elephant that he killed. And what West did was he specialized in inducing psychosis and memory disruption. So before we get to West involvement with Jack Ruby, anything else you want to talk on Jolly West specifically?

Speaker 0just a guy with a resume a mile long in terms of nefarious deeds and any sort of issue in post-war American history that has an asterisk connects to it by us conspiracy heads. He probably put his fingers on, you know, he was involved in Sir Hanser Hand case for the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. He was involved in Petty Hurst trial. And he was involved later in the Timothy McVeay. Treat quote unquote treatment. And everybody he treats, you know, none of them get better, which here's one of the guys recognize one of the most successful psychiatrists of all time and yet, you know, his patients. They're not recovering from their ailments. They seem to just be getting worse.

Speaker 3Yeah, that's uh, and he also, the whole thing with Charles Manson that was uh, Jolly West was was involved with with with that, which is right in Tom O'Neill's book.

Speaker 0Yeah, he was set an up shop in the hate ashberry free medical clinic that he uses a recruitment ground again for these unwitting test subjects in experimentation involving drugs and consistently lied about all of this stuff. I think that's another thing about Jolly West that you compare what he said about his career versus what the documentary record actually shows. And the guy is constantly, constantly telling mistruth about what he's been up to. And you know, it even goes to his areas of study that he will downplay, you know, the hypnosis aspect when he's got as so many publications under his authorship about precisely inducing behaviors through hypnosis and the combination of hypnosis and drugs. So he's a real expert in the field, both in the field of medicine, in the field of devious psychiatry and in the field of

Speaker 3yes, absolutely. So let's talk about how Jolly West gets involved in Jack Ruby's case. And this is a whole, there's a rebuttal on this. So we're going to get deep in the details of this here in just a moment. But basically our position is that West did attempt to insert himself into Ruby's case early. And when he did that, Judge Jo B Brown rejected his involvement initially. And then, Jolly West later joined the defense team via the new attorney Hubert Smith, who I should mention was a medical consultant to the first group of attorneys. So it's not like he's totally an outsider. He's sort of a different player on the same team who takes the lead. But at any rate, it was under Hubert Smith that he brought in Ruby. So here's the kicker. There are six psychiatrists that saw Ruby before Jolly West. and every one of them said that basically his mental state was, you know, that he was not insane.

Speaker 3And when Jolly West visits Ruby on April 26, 1964, he declares that Ruby suffered an acute psychotic break immediately after seeing him. All the doctors who saw him afterwards agreed that he had suffered a psychotic break. And the judge, Joe Brown, expressed concern over this sudden change in Ruby, and he actually brought in another doctor to look at it. And that doctor said, no, there's no problems here. Everything looks, you know, everything looks on the up and up, except for the possibility that he was poisoned, but I would rule that out because of such a secure environment. Basically. some toxicity or whatever. So that that's the story of west involvement with Ruby. So then what happens afterwards? Well, six weeks later, that's when Jack Ruby gives his Warren report testimony in Earl Warren and Joel Ford, forget who the other who the attorneys were that came down. But they came to the jail and spoke to Ruby.

Speaker 3And he gives this rambling. just wild testimony and it kind of the testimony how you guys did a really nice job of dramatizing and I love how you guys do that and you put the filter on the vocal and put the music behind it you guys try to grab it you don't really well but anyway um he's paranoid, he's incoherent, and he keeps talking about it was very meta. He's like, well, when I testify, I'd have a lot to say. I can't, there would be so much I would have to say. And Warren's like, what kind of things would you say? He's like, if I told you when I had to say, I'd be saying a lot. It was just like, a lot of back. And then he wanted light detector tests, and he wanted to be taken to Washington to tell the truth. And basically, it seems like to the norided among us They brought in the guy who's the expert at making people have acute psychotic breaks to give rubia an acute psychotic break and then he did in fact do that right before the war in commission testimony now It's not right before it six weeks before it would be more such I suppose if it was like a few days before but still quite quite suspect because they continue to check afterwards and he was still crazy

Speaker 3Um, yeah, you're doing something like that and then we'll conclude and we'll get to let Winsure Bottles.

Speaker 0Yeah, I mean, he definitely never recovered from that psychotic break because, and I think it's worth zeroing in on exactly what the nature of his psychosis was as reported, you know, on the record here, he became extremely paranoid that there was a big conspiracy an anti-Semitic conspiracy to launch pogroms against American Jews and to blame American Jews for the assassination of JFK. And he's talking about acute visual hallucinations, which is not something that ordinarily accompanies just your average like schizophrenia, onset with no like no previous science of schizophrenia whatsoever, like you said, all of his previous examinations hadn't turned up any indications of a condition like that. And yet now he's saying that he's describing visual hallucinations where he's seeing his siblings tortured in the streets and like torn limb from limb and burned alive and these horrific visual very vivid scenes that

Speaker 0You know, if you are kind of scratching your head in the year 2025 about what might have caused that, I think some hallucinogenic drug would come to the top of your mind. But of course in 1964, LSD was not a household word yet. It would still be a couple more years before the hippies in the But in 1964, even a psychiatrist in practice wouldn't necessarily, unless they're one of these CIA shrinks, of course, but outside of that community, wouldn't necessarily have familiarity with the types of effects of these very powerful hallucinogenic drugs that Jolly West was extremely practiced in administering and then studying. So I think that it seems consistent with a drug-induced psychotic break, perhaps accompanied by some sort of hypnotic suggestion that gets Jack Ruby on this thought process. Jack Ruby doesn't know what to make of it when he's talking to the Warren Commission. He's talking about there is a

Speaker 0John Birch Society conspiracy. He's talking about powerful forces that are conspiring with each other to pin the blame for the assassination not of Oswald, but of Kennedy on him, on Jack Ruby, and to take out the punishment for that crime on his siblings in particular, and on American Jews more broadly. And so when it's really in my mind, a key fact, He's afraid of something happening to the people that he cares about, even beyond himself. And he says that to in his testimony, he says, like, I, you know, forget about me, but they're going to, they're going to create another world war, essentially, and so he's, very much on a one track mind from April 64 when when this all pops off to the few years left in his life until whenever it is December of 66 I think or January of 67 when he passes away.

Speaker 3familiar that you know I when I saw that on your outline I uh it I got a flashback to 1L year I don't think I've seen the phrase since then the idea is it's Latin the thing speaks for itself and in a law if you can get something as restups a locator then you have a lower standard that you have to prove because it's like well obviously this happened it's so obvious To me that's kind of what I would how I would classify the question of did Jolly West cause Ruby's psychotic break on purpose on behalf of the CIA. I think that's the thing speaks for itself. You've got West seeking involvement in Ruby's case, which is disputed. We'll get to the Rebuttal in a second. You've got Ruby's breakdown occurring right after West visits, you have caught causation. You've got Jolly West, uniquely had the skills and the background to induce psychosis. Jolly West worked directly for Sydney Gottlieb, the head of the CIA technical division, as disputed that he did at the time.

Speaker 3but he certainly did in the past and all the records had been destroyed. West close associate, so I wanted his best friends who worked with him in the military and at the University of Oklahoma, which is called OU hilariously. But anyway, this guy, that's the Tomo Niel asked him. You know, you knew Jolly West well, do you think he would have done this? Do you think he would have tried to scramble Ruby's brain, you know, on behalf of the CIA? And the best friend was like, absolutely, he definitely sounds like Jolly. I'm not joking me. That's what he said. So, and then as you mentioned, this same person, Jolly West, is also involved in Timothy McVay. He's involved with Sir Hans Sirhan. He's involved with, he said, Patty Hearst. I mean, it just, the hits keep coming with this guy. Charles Manson. I mean, goodness gracious. What? I don't know how one could look at this body of evidence and go, uh, nothing there.

Speaker 0Yeah, and not only, you know, it was he involved in, again, in quotes, treating Jack Ruby, he in sort of inserted himself. into the Ruby family and became very close with Ruby's sister who was sort of overseeing his defense at the end of his life. Like they were corresponding with each other. They were very close. And Jolly West was a charismatic guy. You know, he was famously a real philanderer. Got a lot of women all over the country wherever he would go. You know, he had the techniques controlling. He's able to not only induce this psychosis in Jack Ruby, but also to kind of, Protect the perimeter, let's say. Secure the perimeter around Jack Ruby so that he has some insight into what information is getting out from Jack and about Jack and what information is getting in and filtering information to Jack because he has so much access to Jack, you know, through, you mentioned Hubert Winston Smith, another one of these,

Speaker 0Shrenks, who's a JDMD, who is a lawyer and a medical doctor in huge, in like the intersection of law and medicine at the time. He would put on these seminars in the various universities where he had been set up and in that process became affiliated, became connected with and acquainted every big name in the sort of MK Ultra scene, you know, he was close with Alton Oshner, who was working for the CIA in New Orleans, and was a big right-wing guy, a medical doctor, he was working with Melvin Belli, was a regular attendee at his seminars, so was Jolly West, of course, around this orbit. And so it's very, again, just like with the mob stuff, it would be one thing if maybe one guy had some connections to the intelligence community with respect to MK Ultra, but it's not just one guy. It's like everybody. And they're all connected to each other, keeping their stories straight with each other.

Speaker 3Right. Let's get to, uh, let's get to a rebuttal here. So this is from Fred Litwin and just everyone knows I put out on Twitter, uh, X, whatever, um, a list of questions seeking feedback from some of the, the most well known proponents of the Oswald did alone theory. And Fred was gracious enough to, to get back with the response. Obviously, we just agree, but I do give a shout out to Fred And yeah, there you go. So let's talk about it. Number one, Fred says that Jolly West did not petition petition the court to be Jack Ruby psychiatrist. So what I've said is that Jolly West inserted himself into the case. And Fred says that's not true. So he cite two newspaper articles that came out on November 30, 1963, in support of the idea that Jolly West was involved in the question of who would be Ruby Psychiatrist early on, but from the newspaper articles, it wasn't clear whether Jolly West was even going to be the Psychiatrist, just that he was helping to put a team of Psychiatrist together.

Speaker 3One article says it was West's idea, another one says that someone came to West with So my response to this is that this analysis ignores the Tomo Neal's book Chaos on pages 377 and 378, where he says, quote, West hoped to assemble a panel of experts and behave your problems to weigh in on Ruby's mental state. He took the extraordinary measure of approaching Judge Jobi Brown, who'd impandled the grand jury that indicted Ruby, West wanted the judge to appoint him to the case. Okay, so you may say, great man, you're signing a book by some guy who cares. So what's the footnote in Tom O'Neill's book? On page 496 of the notes, we see, that this comes from the notes of Jolly West himself, so Jolly West personal notes in outline form for a book he was writing that was never published. So we've got two newspaper articles versus the horses mouth himself, Jolly West, saying that he did approach Judge Joby Brown to appoint him to the case.

Speaker 3So that's my response there. Fred's got another point. The second point on this is that Jolly West wasn't really a big deal when it comes to MK Ultra. We're totally overblowing this. West didn't cause the psychotic break, it was just a coincidence, and West was the first one to notice it. But let one says, quote, why should the CIA explain its relationship with Dr. West in 1964? Should they respond to unsupported allegations? What government agency or corporation for that matter would respond to unsubstantiated claims? Let was main point here is that since we can't draw a line that shows that West was working with the CIA in 1964, we don't have a letter from Gottlieb to West that says, hey, I want you to go and scramble Jack Ruby's brain or even anything after the incident with the elephant that conclusively shows or would demonstrate that he was working for the CIA in 1963. So, you know, Fred says that everything he does is not nefarious because there's just no document to show that he's working with the CIA.

Speaker 3What I would say in response to that is that that analysis ignores the number one Sydney Gottlieb had this personal relationship with West where he's writing to him and he even you know encouraged West to take the job at the University of Oklahoma. And number two, the CIA paid for Jolly West mistake when he poisoned this elephant in 1962. And look, the main headline here is all the documents were destroyed so there are some things where you're not going to have documents but you just have to look at real life things like the elephant and the CIA paying for the elephant that's a big deal and it is a sort of a classic inference split But to me, I think what we've gone over here is overwhelming to do the does the rebuttal of Fred Litwin change your analysis done?

Speaker 0No, especially so on the first point, I would say beyond what O'Neill reports in chaos, Max Arvo, wrote, you know, he elaborated and kind of documented even more. He went to the Jolly West archives and he's got an article up on Jim Dugenio's website, Kennedy's and King that really painstakingly goes through all of what the West Papers say about the period immediately after the investigation of Lee Oswald. And I think it's pretty clear from the primary sources that he sites there, that are the same ones that O'Neill looked at, but you know, in more detail. It just makes it quite clear that, in fact, West was. he kind of initiated maybe with some other of his associates from the American Psychiatric Association, which we know is very intimately connected with the CIA, the idea, and that again, he lied about the idea having originated in Dallas. He said that it came from some people in Dallas that wanted him to get involved, that appears to not have been true, and it's just another instance of Jolly West bending the truth to fit the narrative that he wants to get out there.

Speaker 0And as for the second point, I mean, again, MK Ultra, even some of the scientists and psychiatrists that worked for MK Ultra, worked on subjects, some of them didn't even know that they were working for the CIA, because of this network of intermediary fronts that the CIA set up in order to maintain the secrecy of what was a mass domestic torture program, clearly in violation, not only of the CIA's charter, but also of the US Constitution. And so, when you are violating the Constitution on such a mass scale, regardless of whether you believe that that's in the interest of national security. you are going to take pains to cover that up and the idea that because there's not a smoking gun document says anything about the absence of actual fire there where there's so, so much smoke I just don't take that. I don't agree with that at all. Let's just be polar.

Speaker 3All right, let's quickly move on to Ruby's confessions and then we'll wrap up here. There are two instances where Jack Ruby's on tape. And it's used by folks on the critical side, me included, to demonstrate that Ruby's telling us that there's more than meets the eye to this. So I just want to talk about those and then I've got a rebuttal from Litwin on those as well. So He tells a reporter on video that if Adlye Stevenson were the vice president, the assassination would have never happened. And, you know, you have to think through what that means. It's an implication about LBJ, but it doesn't, I think some folks in the LBJ did it camp will take that quote, and the reason I'm relying heavily on the quote is because it's recorded, it's you could listen to it, so you can watch the video of it still, so it definitely happened. some people take that quote to say oh he's saying the vice president did it the vice president killed Kennedy but as I read that quote and really think about it what he's saying is that if Adly Stevenson who had similar policies as JFK and a lot of areas more similar than LBJ if he was president then perhaps the people who

Speaker 3who wanted him out of there wouldn't have been so eager to kill him because there wouldn't have been someone that had different views from JFK backing him up to a send, what would your assessment of that?

Speaker 0Yeah, I think that that makes sense. And it's also, you know, Ruby did have these mob connections. And as we know, LBJ had shady connections in his own right. It's plausible to me that Ruby would have been at least abstractly aware, you know, if not in detail, that LBJ is tied up with these forces that he considers to be sort of a conspiratorial, nefarious group of people that are acting in Dallas. at what he calls, I think George Senator, Jack Ruby's roommate, said that Ruby thought there was a conspiracy of either the John Birch Society or the Communist Party or maybe both. So I think it's a little bit unsophisticated and you know, imprecise, but we to say that there's something bigger out there operating and anybody that actually knows sort of beyond the public persona of LBJ as you very exhaustively covered in your LBJ series like the guy even if he didn't order the hit on JFK, he certainly did have a lot of fingers in a lot of

Speaker 3Sure, but I mean, it's like even so that quote is not something that alone not would say if he just killed Oswald to protect Jackie from a trial then then what does what does who the vice president would be have to do with anything, you know what I mean.

Speaker 0Right. And I think, you know, also remember that Adly Stevenson had been in Dallas and had been also attacked or threatened, just a few, I don't know if it was weeks or months before, but sometime approximate, or time to the, yeah.

Speaker 3Yeah. Okay. So the other big Ruby quote is the famous, you know, everything pertaining to what's happening is never coming to the surface. The whole world never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives, the people who have so much to gain and have such a material motive to put me in the position I'm in. will never let the true facts come above board to the world and then a reporter says these people are in very high positions Jack and he says yes well that one to me was always like oh my gosh this is the biggest one of the biggest smoking guns in the case and I still think it's a really big deal but Fred that one's got a rubuddle on this he doesn't have a rubuddle for the first point we talked about just the second the second quote And he argues that this quote's taken out of context, and Ruby isn't talking about the truth, generally. He's talking about the truth regarding his war in commission testimony, specifically.

Speaker 3You know, I read this argument, but the added context does not make it clear to me that Ruby is talking about his war in commission testimony. And even if he is, what's the warrant commissioned testimony about after all? It's about the case. So, I mean, just read, again, rest of the episode's a look, or the words speak for themselves. And if there was some paragraph before this that totally undermined the point, I'd be the first one to tell you about it. But from what I've seen on Fred's website, I'm not sold that this is referencing anything other than what it sounds like, which is the case at large. perhaps in the context of the Warren Commission testimony, but he's still talking about the case. So your thoughts on that rebuttal?

Speaker 0Yeah, and this one is not at all persuasive to me because Ruby's statement here, as I've kind of pointed out with a few illusions throughout here. It is not his only statement about a larger conspiracy. This echo of statements he's already made, including to the Warren Commission. When Jack Ruby tells Earl Warren, your life is in danger, Chief Justice Warren, It's not in danger from Jack Ruby, the loan nut, right? He's in jail. He poses no threat to anybody. So who is he talking about? He's talking about people that have the ability even to take out the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And that's why he wants to go to Washington. I think because he thinks that if he can talk to basically the president, it will take that level of organized power to take on the forces that Jack Ruby thinks are behind this conspiracy, but it's very evident from the statement itself, especially when compared to other similar statements that he's made about a larger conspiracy in other contexts that he's not talking about his Warren Commission testimony and another point that you know I debated this back and forth with Fred on Twitter as well that he said something like

Speaker 0you know, with respect to the polygraph that Jack Ruby, he, Fredletman attached significance to the fact that Jack Ruby really insisted on taking this polygraph and wanted it to be made public and in his polygraph examination. which was subsequently determined to be absolutely useless and unreliable, including by the Warren Commission that declined to use it at all, and by the HSEA that just said it was not worth the paper. It was printed on, but he says that he was not part of a broader conspiracy under the polygraph examination. and Fred says because he wanted that to be public, that that signifies that he really wanted the world to know that there was no conspiracy. And not only does that contradict these other later in time statements that he made, but it also is consistent with the sort of thesis that I've developed, which is he's trying to protect his family from murder or torture at the hands of the people that he's referring to here, the people that put him in the position he isn't, that not only can they do whatever they want to him, that he's a lost cause, he says it's in his many words, but the other people in his life,

Speaker 0you know, tortured to death. I think that that's sincerely felt belief on Ruby's part and consistent with his entire psychosis post jolly west.

Speaker 3Sure. All right. Well, let's just quickly wrap up here. I know it's been a long episode. I appreciate your time today. Was Ruby Mafia affiliated? One of the big questions we wanted to answer. I mean, I think we answered this already. I mean, for me, the answer is, no, he wasn't a made man. No, he wasn't on the org chart. But his whole life, he's Mafia adjacent. Everything he's doing, he's completely surrounded by Mafia linked people. So yes, I would say he's sufficiently mafia affiliated for the purposes of our question.

Speaker 0100% agree, you know, even Melvin Belly's law partner, Si Ellison said that he got a call that from a mobster that he knew saying, hey, you guys need to get in there and take care of our guy Ruby for us. And then later on, the same mobster called back and told Ellison, you know what? Actually, you can still represent him, but we're not going to be holding your hand Yeah.

Speaker 3Wow. Wow. Okay. So, all right. So, that's the first question we were trying to answer. The second big question, why did Ruby kill Oswald? And before we answer that, I want to get, I want to address Fred Litwin's Rebuttal. So, Fred says that Ruby killing Oswald was an impulsive act and he came up with a lot of different reasons for it after the fact. So, in other words, who cares why he says it? The reason is it was just impulsive. And so, anything he says other than it was just impulsive, So, looking at this, I came across a document that when I was, it was actually when I was researching the Dorothy Kill Galen episode about a guy named Garnet Holmark who owned the garage across the street from the Carousel Club. And he had a phone in there in his office and he let Ruby come in and use the phone and there's an FBI report about this and also a hallmark testified to the Warren Commission and he said that Ruby was pretending to be a reporter on Saturday afternoon after the assassination.

Speaker 3Ruby told him that I'm acting like a reporter today. Okay, geez, why. And number two, Ruby said on the phone, so he, this guy hallmarked over here's Ruby using the phone, and his office, they's letting Ruby use. He overhears Ruby say that he would be there for the transfer of Oswald. So he said that to the person he's talking to. I'll be there when Oswald is transferred. And so this is from the Hallmarks War and Commission Testimonies. So to me, you combine that with the whole fact. I covered an episode 26 about Karen Carlin and how Ruby set up that he would be at Western Union. He's the one that was his idea to go to the Western Union. To me, this impulsive act thing, I just think that's not consistent with the facts, but everything that we've talked about, it seems like Ruby's relieved after Oswald killed, you know, there's all these things that just are out there in the literature, many of which we've discussed today.

Speaker 3I think Ruby killed Leigh Harvey Oswald to silence him, and I think he did it because he was, he was totally had to do it. So that's from, from the mafia. That's my take.

Speaker 0Yeah. I mean, another, I don't remember if you covered this in your Ruby episodes, but the statement of Billy Grammar, the Dallas Police Detective, who got a call at three in the morning on the 24th and said that it was Jack Ruby, he was very clear and identified Jack Ruby as the person on the other end of the line, who called him middle and night and said, we're going to be careful and the FBI even reported on it, too. So there's, I don't see how you can ignore all of these inditia of premeditation. And obviously the way that you ignore that is by paying attention to the well-planned alibi involving the Western Union. But I'm with you that he was in a lot of debt. He was desperate man, no doubt about it. He was, you know, as he said, taken drugs, uppers in particular, preletin. And I think he was mixing them with some barbiturates and other things to call him his nerve. So, you know, he's unstable for sure, but he's unstable in a way that reflects his life's circumstance that he's in a way that he's in a way

Speaker 0he could go to jail because of his massive tax debts. He could get everything taken away from him. He could get clipped by the same Mafioci who put him up to it in the first place, right? So there's any number of reasons that would motivate him to roll the dice and hit Oswald with perhaps not totally misplaced belief that he could get away with it or that he would get a slap on the wrist or otherwise be afforded a heroes welcome by the people of Dallas for saving the good name of Dallas because it is also true that a lot of people felt ashamed that Dallas had become synonymous with the assassination of the president I wanted to reclaim some dignity and, you know, I don't think it's beyond belief that Jack Ruby would have thought, hey, you know what, this guy as well, this, you know, Kami Rat that killed our president in my city, you know, he's got to get his come up and, and if the Dallas police is on my side, which it was, you know, it, you know,

Speaker 0And nothing can keep me down. And it's certainly better than the fate that I know that I'll meet if I remain a deadbeat and I can't pay off these bills.

Speaker 3Yeah, uh, episode 26. I did touch on Billy Grammar calling in and also there's these guys in a TV van, uh, three of them, three witnesses. All of whom said that Ruby was walking around before asking if they knew what time Oswald was coming out. So there are many, many instances. This was a good episode, and I think we answered a controversial and pivotal question. And I think the answer to who killed JFK and who ordered all that, I think that's, that is still something I'm looking at. I've rolled some things out, I'm zooming in more, but the exact mix of all these different potential culprits is somewhat of an open question for me still, Jack Rubie's role is pretty clear at this point, and Jolly West is a cherry on top that absolutely makes it's a slam dunk to me that he was put there to make Rubie not be capable of telling any of the truth. So, so there you go, sorry for that, I know you disagree, but thanks for engaging with us and giving us your perspective.

Speaker 3And yeah, I know you got to get out of here, solving JFK listeners, do check out Fourth Reich Archaeology. Some of you guys may not like their politics, but I'm just telling you, you're all going to love their historical deep dives because they're great. we have a we'll be off for a week or two and then diving into Israel in January so looking forward to getting hate mail from both sides and that'll tell me that I'm on the right track.

Speaker 0We didn't even get into Hillel Silverman. Jack Ruby's rabbi who was in the idea will not the

Speaker 3I have a feeling I'm not done with Ruby and I'm going to have a Ruby subsection within my Israel series. I think so. Well, maybe we'll come back.

Speaker 0But times for sure.

Speaker 3Thanks again for joining us, Don.

Speaker 0Thanks for having me, Matt. Alright. Cheers.

Speaker 3Thanks everybody.